Chapter 157 Chapter 157

Mr. Xu is almost fifty years old, and his hair is thinning day by day. He squats in the field as usual, checking the soil.

"As the saying goes, a little break in the autumn is better than a plow in the spring." Mr. Xu stood up slowly. "Now is the golden period before the freeze. We must take advantage of the good weather and prepare the land for next year's harvest."

"Okay, I remember." A rough man beside him nodded and asked, "Is your daughter back? It's almost noon, why don't you go home for dinner?"

Mr. Xu nodded with a smile: "I'll go back now. I'll go over there and take a look. I'll be back after I'm done."

An auntie beside him said loudly, "Go back first. The sun is shining brightly. Come back in the afternoon. It won't take two days." Then she waved her hand to let Mr. Xu go home. "It's a rare opportunity for your daughter to come back. It's not easy. You don't need to worry about us all the time."

"That's right, let's go back."

The people working in the fields urged Mr. Xu to go back. Mr. Xu touched his head and, unable to resist the enthusiasm of the villagers, went back.

Looking at Mr. Xu's receding back, Auntie said with emotion: "It has been more than 20 years since Mr. Xu came here."

"A man nodded and said, "What a good college student, he stayed with us, the poor people, for such a long time. College students were quite rare back then."

"If it weren't for Old Xu, how could we have enough food in such a poor place like ours?" said the aunt. "Over the years, this place has gotten rid of the label of a poor village, all thanks to Old Xu, who studies the soil every day, observes the growth, and prevents pests. Now the granary can be filled, and we can eat at home and sell some."

"Yes, Old Xu is a good man."

Mr. Xu, who was praised as a good man by his fellow villagers, just returned home.

As the villagers said, more than 20 years ago, Old Xu, who had not yet graduated from the Agricultural College, came to this remote place with poor land to study a topic. At that time, Old Xu only regarded this place as a test field to test his ideas. However, after coming here, he found that the land here was even poorer than he imagined, and the people living here were very miserable, even to the point of not having enough food, and everyone looked hungry.

This scene had a great impact on the young Old Xu. He had always believed that China was becoming increasingly wealthy. Although not everyone was rich, it was possible for people to have no worries about food and clothing. But when he came to that place and saw the people living in poverty, he finally understood what "Why not eat meat?" meant.

His previous naive thoughts were only because those people who were living in real hardship did not appear in front of him, not because they did not exist.

Lao Xu once asked the people here why they didn’t leave if life was so difficult, and the answer he got was that it was hard to leave their hometown.

But the real deeper reason is that they have no money and no ability. Going to a distant place to seek a way to make a living is not as easy as it sounds. Compared with moving the whole family without knowing where to go or what the future holds, people here prefer to be conservative and work hard to grow more food, hoping to have an extra bowl of rice during the Chinese New Year.

Young people always have an urge to forge ahead courageously. After seeing the hardship of life here, Lao Xu decided to use his own strength to change this place. The topic of his experiment changed from "methods of improving soil quality" to "how to get a good harvest from poor land." The simple topic suddenly became extremely difficult.

As the difficulty increased, Old Xu stayed here for five years before he finally found the direction. Five years later, he brought everyone's life back to the passing line of having enough food and clothing.

But this is not enough. What Old Xu wants is a good harvest, so that every family has surplus food and surplus money. We cannot say they are rich, but at least they are well-off.

Without an official position and without any assignment, he relied entirely on his passion and kindness to study the land and crops every day as a farmer, from a young man to a gradually bald man.

At the same time, he also won the recognition and respect of the people here.

Those who are close to him call him Old Xu, and those who respect him call him Old Mr. Xu.

Mr. Xu returned home and just sat down to drink a cup of tea when he touched the cold kettle. He turned around to boil some water, but his daughter came over with the thermos. "Dad, there's hot water here. Don't look for your thermos from more than ten years ago. It's no longer useful."

"I'm just not used to it." Mr. Xu smiled and sat down, watching his daughter pour him some hot tea. He saw the open notebook on the table and curiously leaned over to read it. "What are you looking at? This is... quantum computing? What?"

"I found a paper from Science Bulletin." The daughter sat down and said, "Didn't I tell you that my future research direction is quantum mechanics?"

Mr. Xu nodded with a smile: "Very good."

"I know you don't understand this, so don't force yourself to read it." The daughter closed the webpage and opened another one. "Why don't you take a look at this? This is a report in Crop Genetics. You should remember this kind of knowledge. Maybe it will help you improve your seeds."

"Okay, let me take a look." Mr. Xu put his hand on the mouse. His hands were a little rough from holding farm tools for a long time, and he was not used to holding a small mouse.

"The meal will be ready soon, please wait a moment." said the daughter and walked out of the room.

Inside the house, Mr. Xu took out his glasses, squinted his eyes and stared at the report on the computer screen. After browsing to the bottom, he saw a link to jump to the next report, and slowly moved the mouse over it.

After clicking, he saw densely packed text. Before he could see what was written, a new web page suddenly popped up and took up the entire screen. Mr. Xu was immediately frightened by the scene. Although he didn't use modern computers much, the computers he remembered were the old desktop computers that could only be used by entering codes. At least he knew that some web pages had viruses. He thought he had clicked on the wrong thing, and hurriedly shouted to his daughter: "Yuanyuan, come and help me check, did I click on the wrong thing?"

"Ah? Did you click something wrong? I'll be right over." The daughter came over, wiping her hands and staring at the computer screen. "Is this a shopping website? Let me see, it's a lighting store... Hey???"

"The Light Shop, is that the Light Shop?!" The daughter looked very excited. "Dad, how did this page come out?"

"I just clicked on the next report and it came out."

My daughter said, "The Chinese official announcement said that the online store page of the Light Organization will pop up randomly, and those who want to get it must be a good person. I was still wondering what this meant. Does it mean that only good people can get it? Dad, if you are not a good person, there will be no good people in this world."

After saying that, she stared at the screen excitedly: "Let me see if there's anything good here?" However, after she took the mouse, she wanted to scroll through the pages or click on the screen, but nothing worked, as if the web page that popped up was just a picture.

"What's going on? Is it a fake product? Someone made a fake website?" The daughter frowned, "What the hell?"

She put down the mouse, and Mr. Xu put his hand on it: "Then I turn it off, okay?"

However, as soon as he moved the mouse over a small product icon, an enlarged picture and description immediately appeared. Yuanyuan's eyes widened. She took the mouse from her father and tried to click, but the website seemed to recognize people. As long as the mouse was in her daughter's hand, it would not move.

"As expected of an online store of a weird organization, this thing recognizes people." The daughter returned the mouse to her father with regret. Fortunately, although she could not operate it, she could still follow and look at the things on the website.

There were not many goods, only a dozen or so, including daggers and copper coins, jade rings and mahogany bracelets, even potions and secret books, as well as several burial objects from ancient tombs seen in the weird live broadcast.

"Pharaoh's gold bracelet!!" the daughter exclaimed. She stared wide-eyed to see how much the item was sold for, only to find that it was marked with barter underneath the product, requiring cultural relics or oddities to be exchanged.

It would be strange if such a thing existed. Perhaps it was because neither Mr. Xu nor she had any cultural relics or strange objects, so the purchase key was gray.

If you can’t buy burial objects, what about the secret manual?

There is only one secret book hanging here - on how to use weird power to attack weird things.

The effects of using the cheats after learning them are described in detail, but... the stock is zero.

"Why hang up something that doesn't exist?" the daughter sighed.

There were potions, for treatment and detoxification, but only one bottle of each. This time my daughter was smart, she did not go to buy immediately, but read all the products and transaction instructions, and found that each person was limited to buying only one item, and shopping was prohibited.

Compared with healing potions and antidotes, my daughter prefers copper coins that can provide early warning and jade rings that can block attacks.

Not knowing which one to choose, she glanced at the prices and unexpectedly discovered that a copper coin required three good grains, while a jade ring required ten good grains.

"Is this...the price correct? Pay with seeds?" the daughter asked with her eyes wide open.

The price was so low that the daughter couldn't believe it, but she wanted to give it a try so she could avoid getting hurt. The daughter often helped her father in the fields and knew where the seeds were. She took three seeds and gave them to her father, saying, "Dad, take these three seeds and click on the transaction to try it out."

Mr. Xu was a little confused. He just listened to his daughter, took the seed and clicked the transaction. Then, the stock of copper coins was immediately reduced by one.

"And then?" asked Mr. Xu.

The daughter looked around and found nothing happened. She shook her head and was about to speak when a figure suddenly fell in front of her, scaring her daughter and she screamed.

Mr. Xu stood up quickly. The thing that appeared had a human shape, but had a head that looked like a dragonfly's face. It was wearing a black cloak, and a hand stretched out from the cloak. The hand looked very much like that of a normal person, and there was a copper coin in the palm of its hand.

It placed the copper coin in Mr. Xu's hand, took away three seeds, and then disappeared.

Three minutes after the strange puppet disappeared, the daughter finally came to her senses and shouted, "Cool!!"

"Yuanyuan, this..." Old Mr. Xu's hand was shaking as he held the copper coin.

The daughter then looked at her father and picked up the copper coin: "Dad, I will string the copper coin for you with a red string, and you can wear it around your neck from now on. If this thing gets hot in the future, you should leave quickly and go to a place where the copper coin is no longer hot."

Compared to the jade ring that can only be used three times, she thinks this thing is more reliable.

"Is this an amulet? You can keep it."

"No, this is yours." The daughter said to her old father seriously, "This is the result of your many years of good deeds and accumulation of virtue. It is a gift to you."

"What's the point of doing good deeds?" Mr. Xu smiled and said, "I'm just a farmer."